Recent violence in western UP is aimed at splitting the alliance between Dalits and Muslims that brought the Bahujan Samaj Party to power.

Let us state at the outset that the main reason cited to explain the outburst of violence in western Uttar Pradesh in recent weeks is ludicrous. Anyone who has travelled extensively in UP, particularly around its Hindu or Muslim pilgrim towns and cities and in its highway dhabas, has lost by now a few percent of hearing capacity due to the blast of loudspeakers – the said loudspeakers usually blasting to the general indifference of the local population.

What is far more worrying is the potent mix of minority stigmatization and concerns – both legitimate and fantasised – for the safety of women. Minor local incidents have been labelled as communal. This has been backed by baseless rumours aimed at blaming a single community for the threats to women. This is an extremely perverse way to both stigmatise a minority and polarise social groups.

Political parties have quickly been accused of fuelling and exploiting these incidents in view of the by-elections to 12 assembly seats due on September 12. It is well understood that parties instrumentalise violence, caste-based or religious-based, for political gains. In August 2013, in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election earlier this year, the Bharatiya Janata Party experimented with a strategy to polarise voters in Muzaffarnagar, aiming to break a decade-long political alliance between the Jats and the Muslims. Contrary to the 1990s' religious mobilisations, the aim here was not to build an elusive and fictitious “Hindu vote block” but to create a rift among the alliance that had enabled the inheritors of Charan Singh to dominate this area.

Rich dividends

It isn’t clear who exactly drew sword first in Muzaffarnagar but what is known is that the initial incident was local and politically insignificant. Not that cases of harassment or traffic incidents do not matter but they do not, in normal circumstances, degenerate into collective retribution against the group to which the protagonists of the incident belong. The violence that followed resulted in the deaths of at least 62 people (42 of them Muslim) and forced an estimated 50,000 people to flee from their homes.

By making sure that no member of the local dominant community would vote for Muslim candidates, the BJP actually fragmented the electorate at the right spot, and bagged the benefits in the absence of credible alternatives. The strategy worked in the Lok Sabha elections. That can be seen from that fact that the vote share density of the BJP in Western UP – both urban and rural segments – was as high as in the state’s cities, where the BJP has traditionally been strong.

The strategy worked in other areas as well. The fragmentation of the non-BJP vote was such that the saffron party was able to get more votes in 22 seats, essentially urban, than the total votes received by its three opponents combined. These urban seats usually have a sizeable Muslim population.

It would seem logical therefore that the next step should be to replicate this successful strategy to other areas soon going to the polls. Recent reports have highlighted the fact that a good share (about 10%) of the recent violence in western UP involves Dalits and Muslims, predominantly in areas that are going to by-election polls in September. This is not surprising, since local Dalit-Muslim alliances have recently helped the Bahujan Samaj Party to rise to power.

Generally speaking, the BSP rose by forging alliances between the Dalit voters and candidates carefully selected from the ranks of the local dominant groups. In 2014, the BJP campaign neutralised this strategy, as few members of the local dominant groups were even available to partner with the BSP, or were already aligned with other parties, such as the Yadavs with the Samajwadi Party. Simply put, there were no other groups for the BSP to ally with, all except the Muslims who, despite carefully spun rumours, have not been swayed by the Modi wave.

The question that begs to be answered is what are the state – and the Samajwadi Party which is in power – doing about this violence? Much has been said about the shared responsibilities of the BJP and the SP in the Muzaffarnagar riots – the BJP for having turned a spark into a fire, and the SP for having waited too long before sending the firefighters. But the point is that the SP ultimately did send the firefighters and demonstrated that the outburst of violence was not merely a matter of failing state capacity.

Violence is rife

In the current situation, the first responsibility of the SP is to reverse the general degradation of the law-and-order situation in the state. Seldom has the party in power let such a state of lawlessness and sense of impunity prevail. Physical violence is a feature of daily life in most localities, as a means to solve inter-personal or inter-caste conflicts and as an instrument to preserve the interests of dominant groups and control over the lower groups. This author conducted fieldwork in 11 villages across Baghpat and Meerut districts nine months before the Muzaffarnagar riots and found only two that did not have a recent murder story to tell. The situation cannot improve when the local police are simply not there to register FIRs and when state actors and legislators are themselves complicit in the violence – if not the actual perpetrators.

One possible explanation for this state of affairs is that Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is not in control of his own party and cannot activate the local cadres to stop or mitigate the violence. In Mayawati’s time, a BSP MP or MLA crossing the yellow line would be sent an invitation to waltz to jail with the Black Cats, under the eyes of the press, invited for the occasion. The BSP could afford to do that as its elected representatives were drawn from local elite groups detached from the local Dalit population who form the bulk of the party’s voters. Party affiliation was not even a prerequisite. These MPs and MLAs were expendable.

This is not the case for the SP, who tends to select its candidates from the same sociological pool of local elites as the BSP, but draws them generally from the local party cadre. The reason is that the local SP leaders and the local elite groups tend to be the same people. The SP is essentially the party of the new elites and its local organizational strength depends from its local representatives. Expelling its members therefore come at a greater cost than for the BSP, since it is usually followed by the breaking up of its local branches.

An uncooperative bureaucracy

Another possible explanation, less common, is that Akhilesh Yadav is finding it difficult to assert his authority over a bureaucracy that has seen a lot of water flowing under the bridges in the derelict state of Uttar Pradesh. Reports suggest that the bureaucrats – notably in the police force – are increasingly less cooperative with a government that seems unresponsive to the ground situation.

There is a third possible explanation, which suggests that the SP has cynically allowed the situation to deteriorate, hoping that it will backfire against the BJP after having hurt the BSP. This argument does not hold water as the same wait-and-see strategy adopted by the SP at the beginning of the Muzaffarnagar riots clearly backfired, a fact it could not but notice.

The amplitude of the current outbursts of violence seems disproportionate for the political gains at stake – a mere 12 assembly seats and not even a chance to defeat the SP’s majority at the Vidhan Sabha. The real objective is the next assembly elections in 2017, which are still far away. But by letting the situation rot and even degenerate, the state government may expose itself to the risk of President’s Rule.

Gilles Verniers is a Ph.D. candidate at Sciences Po, Paris and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ashoka University, Haryana.

The right machine can save water, power consumption, time, energy and your clothes from damage.

In 2010, Han Rosling, a Swedish statistician, convinced a room full of people that the washing machine was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution. In the TED talk delivered by him, he illuminates how the washing machine freed women from doing hours of labour intensive laundry, giving them the time to read books and eventually join the labour force. Rosling’s argument rings true even today as it is difficult to deny the significance of the washing machine in our everyday lives.

For many households, buying a washing machine is a sizable investment. Oddly, buyers underestimate the importance of the decision-making process while buying one and don’t research the purchase as much as they would for a television or refrigerator. Most buyers limit their buying criteria to type, size and price of the washing machine.

Visible technological advancements can be seen all around us, making it fair to expect a lot more from household appliances, especially washing machines. Here are a few features to expect and look out for before investing in a washing machine:

Cover your basics

Do you wash your towels every day? How frequently do you do your laundry? Are you okay with a bit of manual intervention during the wash cycle? These questions will help filter the basic type of washing machine you need. The semi-automatics require manual intervention to move clothes from the washing tub to the drying tub and are priced lower than a fully-automatic. A fully-automatic comes in two types: front load and top load. Front loading machines use less water by rotating the inner drum and using gravity to move the clothes through water.

Simple steps to get the best from your washing machineSimple steps to get the best from your washing machineSimple steps to get the best from your washing machine

Size matters

The size or the capacity of the machine is directly proportional to the consumption of electricity. The right machine capacity depends on the daily requirement of the household. For instance, for couples or individuals, a 6kg capacity would be adequate whereas a family of four might need an 8 kg or bigger capacity for their laundry needs. This is an important factor to consider since the wrong decision can consume an unnecessary amount of electricity.

Machine intelligence that helps save time

In situations when time works against you and your laundry, features of a well-designed washing machine can come to rescue. There are programmes for urgent laundry needs that provide clean laundry in a super quick 15 to 30 minutes’ cycle; a time delay feature that can assist you to start the laundry at a desired time etc. Many of these features dispel the notion that longer wash cycles mean cleaner clothes. In fact, some washing machines come with pre-activated wash cycles that offer shortest wash cycles across all programmes without compromising on cleanliness.

The green quotient

Despite the conveniences washing machines offer, many of them also consume a substantial amount of electricity and water. By paying close attention to performance features, it’s possible to find washing machines that use less water and energy. For example, there are machines which can adjust the levels of water used based on the size of the load. The reduced water usage, in turn, helps reduce the usage of electricity. Further, machines that promise a silent, no-vibration wash don’t just reduce noise – they are also more efficient as they are designed to work with less friction, thus reducing the energy consumed.

Customisable washing modes

Crushed dresses, out-of-shape shirts and shrunken sweaters are stuff of laundry nightmares. Most of us would rather take out the time to hand wash our expensive items of clothing rather than trusting the washing machine. To get the dirt out of clothes, washing machines use speed to first agitate the clothes and spin the water out of them, a process that takes a toll on the fabric. Fortunately, advanced machines come equipped with washing modes that control speed and water temperature depending on the fabric. While jeans and towels can endure a high-speed tumble and spin action, delicate fabrics like silk need a gentler wash at low speeds. Some machines also have a monsoon mode. This is an India specific mode that gives clothes a hot rinse and spin to reduce drying time during monsoons. A super clean mode will use hot water to clean the clothes deeply.

Washing machines have come a long way, from a wooden drum powered by motor to high-tech machines that come equipped with automatic washing modes. Bosch washing machines include all the above-mentioned features and provide damage free laundry in an energy efficient way. With 32 different washing modes, Bosch washing machines can create custom wash cycles for different types of laundry, be it lightly soiled linens, or stained woollens. The ActiveWater feature in Bosch washing machines senses the laundry load and optimises the usage of water and electricity. Its EcoSilentDrive motor draws energy from a permanent magnet, thereby saving energy and giving a silent wash. The fear of expensive clothes being wringed to shapelessness in a washing machine is a common one. The video below explains how Bosch’s unique VarioDrumTM technology achieves damage free laundry.